


From the Mirror

by WhatItCouldHaveBeen



Series: Merry's Men [1]
Category: HAMILTON Laurell K. - Works, Merry Gentry - Laurell K Hamilton
Genre: Canon Character of Color, Gen, POV Character of Color, POV First Person, POV Male Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-24
Updated: 2013-11-24
Packaged: 2018-01-02 12:00:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1056525
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhatItCouldHaveBeen/pseuds/WhatItCouldHaveBeen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first in a series of the men's perspectives from the Merry Gentry series.</p><p>Doyle's perspective of chapters 4 and 5 from A Kiss of Shadows.</p>
            </blockquote>





	From the Mirror

**Author's Note:**

> There is a mention of a rape scene that is canon from the book.
> 
> All characters belong to Laurell K. Halmilton. This is a not-for-profit fanwork, no copyright infringement intended.

I arrived in time to witness the most grievous mishandling of a woman’s breasts I had ever seen outside the bounds of cruelty.

The woman to whom I was charged to bequeath the queen’s Mark, the Princess Meredith NicEssus, stood in an office in nothing but lacy lingerie. She looked patiently amused by the mortal man who had his hand plunged into her undergarments.

They had an audience, though it was not, in fact, an exhibition. The princess seemed to work as a spy in an agency that sometimes assisted mortal law enforcement. Apparently the man was outfitting the her with some technological artifact that carried her words across a distance, and it needed to be hidden securely. This much I had surmised as I watched from the mirror on one wall, unknown to the rest of the people in the room.

The disregard the human gave the princess, without even the courtesy of a token of admiration, was appalling by fey standards.

He was human, though, not fey, and seemed to be more in love with his work than with women. Nonetheless, the other people in the room all seemed to be watching his rummaging with varying degrees of humor and horror. The two fey seemed to at least be enjoying the incidental nudity.

I was immune such displays. I was, after all, a court eunuch, sworn to celibacy this past millennium by the Queen of Air and Darkness. Unmoved, I had watched countless orgies sprawled at the foot of her dais from her side. I was her strong left hand, her Darkness.

The Princess Meredith had finally been found after three years in self-imposed exile, and now Queen Andais wanted her niece back. No one knew precisely why, but no one was going to argue. The trouble was, the princess had fled the Dark Court because of the repeated attempts on her life. For all her royal sidhe heritage, she had been born mortal, and had no sidhe powers. There was nothing to stop ambitious nobles from trying to stomp on her like an insect.

Except the queen’s Mark, a magic that would declare to all that she bore the queen’s personal protection, a magic I now carried in my body.

“You must give it to her as I give it to you,” Andais had said. I had known from that alone that it was going to unpleasant.

I had eschewed physical intimacies for as long as I have endured my celibacy. I did not play games. I did not flirt, or tease, or touch.

I had not kissed a woman for a thousand years before Andais grabbed my hair and forced her mouth against mine. It was a violent, passionate kiss, thrusting her magic into my body.

Before that moment, the queen had never toyed with me the way she had some of her other Ravens. She had never taken me to her bed, nor even looked on me with desire, for all that our celibacy was allegedly so that our seed would be given to her body and no one else’s.

And then that kiss.

Which I now had to give in turn to the princess, the mostly naked woman being gratuitously fondled by the mortal in front of her. The princess seemed remarkably good natured about it all. But then again, she had been living among mortals for a long time.

Then, when the man was finally done with his task, a roane, a small, unremarkable man in his human form, picked up the princess’ dress and offered to help her put it on.

I could tell immediately by the tiny ways they responded to each other they were lovers. This was not merely courteous fey flirting. He dressed her with the energy most men would undress a woman. He barely touched her skin as he slid the cloth up her body and zipped it up the back, but the entire gesture was rife with sexual promise.

I had denied myself even such subtle intimacies. I wondered if the princess was lonely, here in the Western Lands. Starving without the touch of another sidhe, only a roane to comfort her.

Andais’ kiss might have unnerved me more than I wanted to admit to myself, to leave me thinking such thoughts.

I could have stepped through the mirror, done my duty, and escorted the the princess back to Faerie. I had only just arrived, though, and there was much I could learn if I but waited a little while. And if anyone else was watching her, I did not wish to reveal myself just yet.

I followed the princess and her entourage discreetly until they reached a pub, in which she began to solicit a certain human man for sex.

I didn’t know exactly why the princess was at the pub, flaunting herself. But by the way she responded to the human, the questions she asked, I knew she had some other purpose, and seduction was only a tool.

The man drove her to a house in the outlying lands around the behemoth metal city. Her entourage trailed them, remaining undetected. Once they were inside, I found a mirror to spy through.

It was directly above an enormous crimson bed. But around the bed was drawn a circle of power. Suffocating raw power filled the house, far beyond what a mortal man should have been able to summon. That was… curious. And disturbing.

The princess tried to gather information, and they began the motions of lovemaking. But there was no passion in her body. The man did not notice, eager, and smug, which I did not like.

Then I sensed someone else watching through the mirror with me.

I came to a battle awareness instantly. The presence was another sidhe. I did not believe they could sense me, though I could them. They displayed great power but little refinement. I could not see them, but I knew they were there.

Enough. It was time to retrieve the princess. The risk to her was too great.

I began the spell that would allow me to step through the mirror— And found myself blocked.

Powerful indeed. Few could thwart me. I began trying different spells, still remaining undetected.

Beneath the mirror in the crimson bed the man took out an oil, as if for erotic massage. He coaxed and wheedled the princess into smearing it on.

When I understood what the oil was, something very like fear squeezed my heart, thrilled in my veins.

Branwyn’s Tears. An aphrodisiac that could turn anyone into a sidhe lover for a night, that could turn one mad for touch, for release.

If Branwyn’s Tears were on the loose, then Andais’ standing was weaker than even I knew. There were traitors in position to thieve one of the most precious of our remaining relics.

This was why the circle of power, the sidhe spy in the mirror.

A sidhe was allowing themselves to be worshiped by sex magic, stealing the magic of fey women.

To not exalt ourselves as gods is our strictest taboo. If the human government in this country discovered it we would all be exiled, every sidhe, every goblin, every tiny demi-fey in the whole vast land.

The princess was overwhelmed by the Tears. Her body responded to the man’s touch, but she fought it, told him ‘no.’ He wouldn’t listen, too drunk on Tears and power and his own hubris.

I had to stop this, and I couldn’t get through the mirror.

My orders were to give the queen’s Mark to the princess that she might be protected from who would harm her. I clearly had a duty to act. But it was not only that. I could not bear to watch her be raped, not when I could stop it. There were too many times when I couldn’t stop it, and here no order from my queen or her princeling son would stop me.

But whatever sidhe was on the other side of that mirror, they had enough talent to keep me out, and that was no small thing.

I tried something else, and called my animal.

I watched a tiny spider crawl along the man’s back, then another.

 _Get under the bed_ , I warned her.

She heard me, and reacted, scrambling under the bed, just as the mirror exploded into a million crystal shards.

My satisfaction was a dark thing, as I watched the spiders pour out of the sidhe-worshipper’s back in a river of shiny black, marching through the blood and meat of him.


End file.
